Hello Windsor-Essex! Welcome to my blog “Youth Matters.”

My name is Chelsea Girard and I will be blogging here regularly about the issues and concerns of young people today. So let’s get started!

Coinciding with “Eating Disorder Awareness Week” February 1-7, 2016 my first blog relates to this serious issue among teenagers, especially women.

In the eyes of a teenager, image isn’t solely based on personality and intelligence, but more so their outer appearance.

Whether it be a personal self image problem or a bullying issue, our youth see themselves as works of art, and sculpt themselves to be the person they want to me. Battling eating disorders, bulimia, and anorexia, teenagers want to fulfill the desire to fit in and look like the peer normal. As much as we believe that teenagers are comfortable in their own bodies, their minds can be altered by peer pressure and the hottest model. Both man and female, teenagers strive to be skinnier, rather than chubby.

The likeliness of a teenager in your household developing an Eating Disorder is that 90% of women suffer from anorexia and bulimia whereas binge-eating affects both males and females equally. Of those who have eating disorders, age range between the ages of 12 and 26.

Teenagers who develop eating disorders usually consist of irregular eating habits, eating very little, or not at all.

Teenagers can also partake in diets, attempting to build more muscle, obtain more mass, and lose fat. Diets can harm an undeveloped body and trick the mind into believing all your body needs is nutrition but to little or too much can subject your body to sickness.

I believe teens should accept themselves as they are, there is nothing wrong with eating healthy or working out, but nobody should feel subjected to change in order to fit in or feel comfortable in their own body. We are all different in different ways, in comparison to flowers — flowers bloom among the same flower as them, but their colours differ along with their sizes, yet we still see their beauty in different ways.

“Beauty starts in your head, not in your mirror.” – Joubert Botha

For more information please visit The Canadian Mental Health Association website.

Please feel free to leave me a message here and I will be sure to get back to you. Lets start some great discussion about Youth Matters!